Research shows that one-fifth of New Year resolutions fail within the space of just one single week.
What is your top New Year’s resolution this year? Is it to get on top of your finances…finally?
According to the comparison site GoCompare that resolution the fifth most popular one that Brits are making right now.
Given the torrid time we’ve had with our money over the last couple of years, it’s not a surprise that many of us really want to get a handle on our hard-earned.
In fact, investment platform Hargreaves Lansdown say that more than one in three of us will make a financial resolution this year, rising to two thirds of people aged 18-34.
However, the bad news they say is that a fifth of our New Year resolutions fail with a week…just a week…after we make them!
So what hope have any of us of carrying out our plan of getting ourselves on our feet financially and starting on the road to real wealth?
Step by step
Well, there are some tricks you can use to follow through on your resolutions and make some serious money for yourself.
Firstly don’t give yourself a big resolution like ‘getting on top of my finances’.
Do it step-by- step. It’s best to set up some positive, small activities for the new year rather than come up with a big thing that you have to do now.
Give yourself some small but positive tasks. For example, your first steps could be:
- To go through your statements for the last year (or just the last few months) to see if there are any odd payments that you don’t recognise or some standing orders that you don’t need to pay anymore. You’d be amazed at how much money you could save just by checking those!
- Next, go through your boring monthly essential spends like insurance, gas and electricity, broadband and even your mortgage and set yourself the task of switching to cheaper versions. You could do one a day for a week. Each time you do it, multiplyyour monthly saving by 12 and that will show you how much you will save over the year. Just seeing those nice figures will spur you on!
- Have a look at your pension statements, go on. You could do this with a friend or loved one who also needs to look at their statements. These are never written in an easy-to-understand way (thanks to their compliance departments) so it’s helpful to do it with someone else so that you can work out what it all means together. Even call up your pension company to get things explained by an actual human being…if there are any at the end of that line!
- Then look at your savings and investments. Are they making as much money as they should be? If not, go onto a comparison site for savings accounts like Moneysupermarket.com and switch to a better deal. I recommend that you lock in a rate now as word has it that interest rates may need to come down this year. No one really knows but it’s a possibility, so it’s worth going for a fixed rate for at least a year if you’re able to. With your investments, speak to a financial advisor or do a bit of reading around to make your own decisions.
